Guido von List, 1848-1919, Austrian writer and occultist, was
born in Vienna to a prosperous merchant family. At an early age enjoyed
outdoor pursuits and became a writer and scholar. After unsuccessful endeavors
in the family leather business, he earned a sparse living by writing magazine
articles. His novel Carnutum, 1888, a historical romance pitting
heroic Germanic tribesmen against villainous Romans, won him much acclaim.
This was followed by two more successful novels and a series of plays exhibiting
similar themes. These works gained him popularity, especially among the
German nationalists then struggling to define and defend a German identity
within the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1902, List turned more toward occultism following eye surgery which
left him blind for almost a year and a mystical experience associated with
ancient Nordic runes. He was studying fragmentary materials concerning ancient
Germanic paganisn which convinced him that a caste of priest-kings, the
Armanen, had governed all Germanic tribes in ancient times, and had preserved
their secrets after the coming of Christianity through a series of secret
societies including the Knights Templar, the Masons, and the Rosicrucians.
He further said that the Armanen had been forced to entrust their secrets
to Jewish rabbis in the Rhneland in the eighth century in to preserve them
from Christian persecution; this, he believe, was the origin of the Kabbalah.

List produce the first significant work for modern occultism on the runic
alphabet, Des Geheimnis
der Rumen (The Secret of the Runes, 1908). His research also traced
the pagan roots of fairy tales and folklore. From his 1902 revelation he
devised a somewhat idiosyncractic approach to runes, and made it one of
the central elements of his magical system.

He also ventured into prophecy, predicting that a "Strong One from
Above" would arrive in the near future to reestablish the ancient Armanist
state and lead the German people to the mastery of the world. This prophecy
was arguably fulfilled by Adolf Hitler who rose to power shortly after List's
death.

He greatly influenced European occultism at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Such influence was fostered by the founding of the Guido von List
Society in 1908 to promote his ideas. The membership included the wealthy
and those from the conservative and nationalist circles, as well as the
occult community, the society evolved an inner circle, the Hohere Armanen-Orden,
"Higher Armanen Order," or HAO, which conducted pilgrimages to
pagan religious sites. For decades following List's death his ideas were
the main stay of the occult movements within German-speaking countries.
They also provided the magical dimension of the Nazi movement, and serve
as partial foundation for current Norse and Germanic neopaganism. A.G.H.